Category: History

Lina Wertmüller will open your mind, make you laugh, wince, and, at some point, probably piss you off. She was a force in 20th Century filmmaking, and the likes of Jane Campion, Sophia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow and Greta Gerwig owe her a huge abbracciare for the path she carved through the male-dominated jungle of film directing.

The 90th Oscars ceremony is quickly approaching us. Now such a major part of the film industry that it is almost hard to believe that 90…

The most appropriate metaphor for the Oscar race is probably the image of a cattle drive, with PR staff working overtime to herd as many voters as possible into one’s own corral. What is the most effective strategy for this? Concentrating on the perception that one’s vote does not necessarily reflect what is best in film, but what best represents the collective self-image of AMPAS voters from selections of a particular season.

“Journalism is the first draft of history,” Phil Graham, newspaper publisher and part owner of the Washington Post, once said. I would add that films about journalism – whether fictional  or based on true events – would be the postscript to history, with license.

I’m on a rant, so consider yourself warned. I had a genial little chapter on LitFlicks nearly ready for submission when I read a NY Post article by way of the Guardian that cited an American poll that said only 30% of younger audiences have seen a film in black & white and that fewer than 25% had ever watched a film from the 40s or 50s to completion.

This is a tricky one. Some would call it, rightly so, revisionist history – a term that has been given a bad rap. Yes, real…